Question a friend, perhaps he did not do it; but if he did anything so that he may do it no more.A hasty quarrel kindles fire,and urgent strife sheds blood.If you blow on a spark, it will glow;if you spit on it, it will be put out; and both come out of your mouth

It is testing a very passive vocabulary. I clicked only those words which I could probably give a relatively accurate definition for.

Many I didn't click I had a vague idea about and would be able to understand more accurately within context.

Some I had never encountered.

People's active vocabulary, especially those words which make up most of their usage ain't very much.

My German passive vocabulary hasn't changed much.

Oh but how my active vocabulary has. It's terrible.

And my passive vocabulary for other Germanic languages which I never studied or spent anytime with is pretty high. And my active vocabulary is probably a dozen or words, if I think very, very hard, I might hit one hundred.

A little less than 7,000 words more than the "average native speaker" my age. Meh. I was hoping for a bit more...

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"Hades is not a place, no, but a state of the soul. It begins here on earth. Just so, paradise begins in the soul of a man here in the earthly life. Here we already have contact with the divine..." -St. John, Wonderworker of Shanghai and San Francisco, Homily On the Sunday of Orthodoxy

31,100. Slightly higher than the average for my age (27,808), but still seems mighty low given my career choice. Dang.

Also, Ebor's post reminded me that I broke my kneecap at the beginning of summer when I was 12 years old. When my grandfather heard about it, he sent me a very old, very heavy (hardback) desk dictionary from his office library at home (he was a medical doctor). I read the whole thing from cover to cover that summer, since I couldn't really go anywhere or do anything (a full leg cast, plus just generally being 12 years old, led to a lot of home-based boredom). Obviously I've forgotten most of it by now. Oh well.

I'm a bit embarassed over this. I know I'm not a native speaker, anyhow gifted with languages nor have I ever lived or even visited an English-speaking country but I still hoped for a little better result. Talk about perfectionism.

What kinds of books do you like to read? Classic literature or poetry can have a lot of different words. Non-fiction can have a lot of vocabulary depending on the topic. Different genres like mysteries or Science Fiction or Westerns will also often have more specialized word usage.

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"I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", or even "Teach my performing dogs new tricks". - C. S. Lewis

In my first year at university, I encountered a short story from the mid-20th century (Faulkner or Steinbeck, I always confuse those two) where I had to cover the book margins with notes on over 100 unknown words.

20 years later, I stand at 38.3K.

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'When you live your path all the time, you end up with both more path and more time.'~Venecia Rauls